Alzheimer's disease, and dementia, represent a common cause of disability and one of the most relevant challenges in the health world. In addition, these conditions do not have, at moment, a pharmacological treatment that can stop the pathological progress. Mild cognitive impairment (MCI), defined as the borderline between normal aging and early dementia, represents a meaningful field of study because, in the transition to dementia, clinicians have defined a useful therapeutic window. Additionally, due to the lack of effective pharmacological interventions, recent years have seen an increase in research into new technological solutions to assess, stimulate, and assist patients afflicted with Alzheimer's disease. This review aims to outline the use of information and communication technologies in the field studying MCI. Particularly, the goal is to depict the framework and describe the most worthwhile research efforts, in order to display the current technologies available, describe the research objectives, and delineate prospective future researches. Regarding data sources, the research was conducted within three databases, PubMed Central, Web of Science, and Scopus, between January 2009 and December 2017. A total of 646 articles were found in the initial search. Accurate definition of the exclusion criteria and selection strategy allowed identification of the most relevant papers to use for the study. Finally, 56 papers were fully evaluated and included in this review. Three major clinical application areas have been portrayed, namely “Cognitive Assessment,” “Treatment,” and “Assistance.” These have been combined with three main technological solutions, specifically “Sensors,” “Personal Devices,” and “Robots.” Furthermore, the study of the publications time series illustrates a steadily increasing trend, characterized by the enrollment of small groups of subjects, and particularly oriented to the subjects assistance using robots companion. In conclusion, despite the new technological solutions for people with MCI have received much interest, particularly regarding robots for assistance, nowadays it still owns vast room for improvement.

Dementia and other cognitive disorders affect more than 35 million people worldwide. Over the last years, cognitive training tools were used to improve the brain functioning, thus to slow down the cognitive decline. Recently, research studies have demonstrated that aerobic exercise could play an important restorative role toward cognitive impairments. Therefore, the aim of this work is to present an innovative sensorized approach which combines aerobic exercise and traditional cognitive tools for daily training.

Cognitive Rehabilitation Therapy refers to any systemic therapy specifically designed to enhance cognitive performance. Recent studies have shown that physical exercise is beneficial for cognitive activity in patients with degenerative diseases. Therefore, the objective of the present study is to provide training for cognitive functions that take advantage of the physical activity in the execution of the task. A feasibility study concerning the application of a new bioengineering technique in cognitive rehabilitation is presented and it divided into two parts. The first one aims at developing a new cognitive tool, called SmartTapestry (ST), for motor and cognitive rehabilitation. The second part aims at understanding its technical viability and its level of sensitivity in measuring the same cognitive domains covered by the standardized tests. The hypothesis of this study is that, despite the introduction of this new variable, the proposed system has the same sensitivity of the traditional tests. The results suggest a good correlation between the two approaches and that SmartTapestry can train the same cognitive functions of traditional cognitive tasks.

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In the past decade, cognitive training tools have been used to improve brain functioning, and some have been applied to cognitive decline in dementia. Recently, research studies have demonstrated that aerobic exercise could play an important restorative role toward cognitive impairments. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to present the innovative use of the SmartWalk tool, which combines aerobic exercise and cognitive protocols traditionally used to stimulate cognitive function. Methods: The primary goal of this study to demonstrate if our tool is correlated with traditional computerized test in stimulating the cognitive system similarly, despite the fact that Smart-Walk adds a supplementary physical load on the task. The SmartWalk tool was tested with a total of 49 subjects-29 healthy subjects and 20 subjects with Mild Cognitive Impairments. The participants were asked to perform both the tests to fulfil the proposed goal. Results: The results obtained considering the overall population show a good and significant (p < 0.05) correlation for the "correct," "error," and "omitted" scores (r = 0.54, r = 0.34, and r = 0.39, respectively). Conclusion: The results suggest a good correlation between the two approaches with the advantage of adding aerobic exercise to the traditional cognitive task. Significance: The results of this study may be useful in designing ecological and combined cognitive-physical tool to personalize interventions and delay the onset of cognitive disorders like dementia.

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Motor features traditionally define Parkinson’s disease (PD), but non-motor characteristics such as cognitive impairment and dementia have been gradually documented as a core part of PD. Mild cognitive impairment, as a pre-dementia phase of cognitive dysfunction, is recognised as common in non-demented PD patients. In any case, before Parkinson’s Disease-Mild Cognitive Impairment (PD-MCI) diagnostic criteria proposed by the Movement Disorder Society (MDS) Task Force in 2012, there was no agreement in the scientific community about definition, clinical features and evolution of PD-MCI. It explains why epidemiological data reported by many studies provide contrasting results. Nevertheless, many investigations have pointed out that a large amount of PD patients without dementia present a specific neuropsychological impairment, mainly characterized by executive, visuospatial and memory deficits. This review focuses on mild cognitive impairment in PD (PD-MCI). To clarify the characterization of PD-MCI neuropsychological profile, a MEDLINE literature search was carried out. Data were extracted from studies published since 1980. The neurocognitive profile of PD patients was heterogeneous. Cognitive impairment was common in PD even at the time of diagnosis and before drug treatment and it was associated with functional impairment. Primary findings reported that single domain impairment with executive dysfunction was more common than multiple domain impairment, but, nowadays, those results are largely criticized. Moreover, visual-space abilities deteriorated very early during the pathology. Patients with posterior cortical deficits seemed to be associated with the development of Parkinson’s Disease Dementia (PD-D), whereas patients with front striatal deficits were not, hence suggesting the presence of two distinct cognitive syndromes with different aetiologies and prognoses. However, several questions regarding PD-MCI criteria remain currently unanswered. More attention must be paid to the definition of best cut-off scores and to accurate, specific and sensitive tests for discriminating between patients with and without PD-MCI. Further investigations should define the exact prevalence of PD-MCI across different sites/cohort types, estimate PD-MCI subtypes prevalence and even link the clinical phenotype (akinetic-rigid vs tremor-dominant) to the different neuropsychological profiles. Furthermore, research needs to focus on detecting the neuropsychological predictors of PD-MCI conversion into PD-D. Poor efficacy of non-pharmacological intervention to delay the onset of PD-D in PD-MCI patients is also discussed.